


It is the East

by elruesta



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drabble, Friendship/Love, Gen, Love, M/M, POV First Person (bertlbertlbertl)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 07:51:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elruesta/pseuds/elruesta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>And Reiner is the sun.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	It is the East

**Author's Note:**

> Excuse the lame Romeo & Juliet reference idk
> 
> "They" is basically Armin (because his grandpa probably had forbidden ancient astronomy texts)

They say you shouldn't stare at the sun because it blinds you and burns you. It peels your skin off like an ape with a fruit, and it bakes you like an apple and eats you with a smile.

They say the sun gives you life because without it we'd never be warm. Ancients used to worship it, they say, sacrificing life and limb in prostrate worship to a glowing, yellow disk.

I play out in the sun when I'm little. My bare feet feel like heaven in the dewy grass, and Reiner runs like hell to chase me. When he catches me, he tackles me, and we fall with a soft thud into the field and roll around like fox kits in their den, laughing because we don't know what it means to be a warrior yet.

They say his hair is blond. I look at him while he laughs, and each strand of his hair glows a different shade of gold like it's the color of the sun.

They say we orbit it. They say we're floating on a rock in this thing called space and we go in circles around this luminous orb like our lives depend on it.

I look at him when he's not looking at me, and I don't know it yet, but I understand what gravity is.

_Who else would understand?_

They say that the moon orbits the Earth. It circles us like clockwork and every once in while, it stands between the Earth and the sun like Reiner stands over me when we're trainees and helps me up with an indifferent hand.

He calls himself a soldier now. I look at him when he smiles, and his eyes are eclipsed with a single shade of molten gold.

He calls himself a soldier, but sometimes he's a warrior. They say the moon tugs on the Earth and causes tides in these weird things called oceans, and it's kind of like that, in a way.

They say if you get too close to the sun, it burns you. They say it must be like swimming in fire, like being melted and welded by God into nothing.

He's a soldier when he's with them, and he's a warrior when he's with me, but sometimes he mixes it up. Sometimes he mixes it up and my face lights up like a candle flame and my heart pounds like a blacksmith's swing, but there's nothing I can say.

_Who else would understand?_

They say that all good things come to an end, that even stars must die. They say they expand before they burst, swelling like Reiner's cheeks and exploding like his lips on my stomach when he blows a raspberry and I laugh because he's a warrior again, even for this little while.

They call their deaths supernovae. They say they can be seen for these things called light years.

I look at Reiner as he jumps in front of me to protect me from a Titan outside the wall. I look at him as he falls to the ground, as he doesn't get up, and I think about how much light he's given me all these years and how dark the rest will seem.

_We're all just short-lived mass murderers, anyway._

They say that stars begin from dust. It's not the dead skin that floats in sunbeams, but the atoms that make our hearts beat. Yet, as the beating slows, as the dust settles, all I'm left with are ashes.


End file.
